Based on things that I remember Ravi and Rick saying way back when, my take on
it is this. Ravi was married to a woman who was an ardent Amma follower. She
dragged him to Amma gatherings and courses, but he always felt out of place
because (according to him) his wife and all of her friends tended to treat him
as if he were not terribly bright and low-vibe. (Both of which, of course, were
true.)
Some people have short-lived flashy experiences after getting hugged by Amma,
and I guess Ravi had one of those experiences. But then he parlayed that into
claiming that he'd had some major realization experience. From what he said
about it later on FFL, I suspect he did this just to "get back at" his wife and
her friends by claiming to be even more advanced than they were. (He later
admitted to having made up most of these "good experiences" in posts to FFL.)
Anyway, word of this guy who was going around claiming to have been
"enlightened" by Amma reached Rick, and he interviewed Ravi for BATGAP. As I
remember hearing, Rick was not very pleased with the video, because Ravi spent
part of it raving negatively about his wife (soon to be ex-wife, as she dumped
him shortly thereafter and, as I remember, even had to take out a restraining
order to keep him away from their kids) and all the terrible things he wanted
to do to her.
Nevertheless, Rick invited Ravi to FFL, and that is where the real craziness
started. Given some attention, he quickly became so abusive that people
(including Judy and a number of others who later became his enablers once he
began to attack *their* enemies*) suggested that he was seriously disturbed and
needed professional help. At one point he even claimed to have checked himself
into a mental institution, which turned out to be yet another of his lies. He
continued to be a problem on Fairfield Life for some time after that, until
Rick finally tired of him trying to fuck up Curtis' reputation and career and
finally booted him off.
>From my side the danger of people like Ravi is two-fold. First, he managed to
>"talk the talk" of someone having a "realization experience" well enough that
>Rick was completely fooled, and interviewed him for his show. That speaks of
>incredibly low standards being used to determine "enlightenment." For me and a
>few other FFL posters, from Day One on FFL there was *simply no question* that
>Ravi was both mentally ill, and potentially dangerously so. He raved about the
>abusive things he had done to his wife, and the even more abusive things he
>wanted to do to her in the future. He was abusive to other people on the
>forum, and often bragged about things that no sane person would even admit to
>on a public forum (like buying drinks for underage girls in an attempt to get
>them to fuck him).
The second reason I think he was dangerous is that he was the classic example
of what happens when you give a mentally ill person an audience. He only
started to go REALLY crazy when he developed "fans" here on Fairfield Life,
people who glommed on to his craziness and *applauded it*, because he was
attacking people *they* didn't like (like Curtis and Vaj and myself). It was a
clear case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," and a LOT of people here
wound up *enabling* his insanity, and thus IMO causing his mental illness to
get worse.
I was a proponent of leaving his original BATGAP interview up for all these
reasons. Ravi was a big, red, flashing warning sign of 1) what happens when
people have such low standards that they believe that a crazy person claiming
to be enlightened is enlightened, rather than crazy, and 2) what happens when
they give such a crazy person an audience to feed their ego.
From: "Michael Jackson [email protected] [FairfieldLife]"
<[email protected]>
I wonder what led Rick to interview him to start with?
From: "TurquoiseBee [email protected] [FairfieldLife]"
<[email protected]>
Interesting that Rick finally yanked the Ravi video. I remember we (Rick
and I) had a discussion about it on FFL once, and I was a proponent of leaving
it up, *as a cautionary tale* of how badly Rick could fuck up and be taken in
with regard to who is enlightened and who is not.
I suggested that he leave the video up, but comment on it as I have above. Last
I heard, that is what he had done.
Too bad in many ways that it's no longer available. He was quite the loon. But
more important, because of Rick he became for a short time a loon with a forum,
and a loon with an audience for whom to act loony.
That's very dangerous, and I still feel some kind of record of that should have
been left.
From: "[email protected] [FairfieldLife]"
<[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, December 29, 2014 11:56 PM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: The real nature of transcendence
And, on some hard drive somewhere, I have an .FLV file of it that I never
once watched.
---In [email protected], <[email protected]> wrote :
Ravi's video was pulled, so I never saw it.
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